Midnight Books
by azarathangel
Summary: Her Midnight Books, Raven called them. Pockets of adventure and emotion she loved to escape to in hopes that one day, these feelings could flow just as freely through her as they did through these pages. Raven-centric with a dusting of RobRae fluff. [OneShot]


**Midnight Books**

Hello lovely readers! To newcomers, welcome and leave reviews! To those who saw a notification and thought it was a 'Lost in the Storm' update, I'm sorry and please don't burn me at the stake! And still leave reviews!

This is a little ficlet I thought of the other night after experiencing that surge of emotion after finishing an especially fantastic book. It's still rough around the edges, but I like it and had fun writing it.

I'm a night owl when it comes to creative juices, and despite no work all week (the life of an employee under government shutdown right now… bastards), it's been a long one and I haven't had time to work on the next chapter of 'Lost in the Storm' yet. BUT, I promise to have it done by Wednesday night! That's right, Wednesday! I'm setting a deadline! After that, feel free to brandish pitchforks and the like.

Raven-centric one-shot with some birdy fluff thrown in because I just can't avoid it.

**Rating: K+ **because what else am I supposed to rate drabble.

**Disclaimer: **No, I don't own them. If I did, the regular show would still be up and going (with healthy heaps of RobxRae), and this bizarre Titans Go! thing would be a weird dream.

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The living room was in a rare state of quiet, the five residents of Titans Tower sprawled around the room in varying degrees of stillness. The day had started out normal enough, that is to say, it began with hollering and music and clanging kitchenware. The alarm had blared, something not unusual for the Titans. A burglary had been thwarted; sandwiches were enjoyed in the park; all returned home, expecting to stay there. But another alarm had blared, another villain defeated, and now the Titans were weary, a bit battered, and unusually quiet. Even their dinner argument that night had been muted, all settling on cheese pizza for delivery. Even Cyborg had remained quiet on the subject of meat, content to decorate his own slices with pepperoni from the fridge. Raven hadn't even eaten the one slice she usually enjoyed, choosing instead to slide it onto Robin's nearby plate halfway through the meal.

The television hummed quietly with the sounds of 'Wonderful World of Fungus' floating out of the speakers. Starfire was sprawled across one end of the couch, an impressive bruise forming on the shin she had propped up on the arm of the couch, ice bag beginning to slip off the side. Her boots lay abandoned by the dinner table. Beast Boy was seated on the ground near her, back against the couch as he played his handheld game. He had escaped the day with a few broken toes, but Raven had managed to heal most of the damage, leaving the bruised changeling with only a slight limp. Cyborg had yet to move from the dinner table where he sat with his laptop. In the middle of the couch, Robin had his legs stretched out in front of him as he stared into space. And at the far end of the couch sat Raven, her legs drawn to her chest and chin resting on her knees. Her gaze was directed towards the television screen, but she wasn't really watching. The silence of her friends was too overwhelming. There was a quiet tension beneath the blanket of exhaustion in the room, and she knew she was the source.

Battles with Dr. Light were the ones that caused most worry for her by her teammates, so it was a surprise to all that the afternoon's run-of-the-mill Cinderblock battle had gotten the best of her. Raven knew the tension would be gone by morning, but still she could not shake her quiet frustration over it. It had been a two second misstep, a momentary flash, but the silence that stretched into the evening hours unnerved her. She knew it was their attempt to let it go and ignore it, but Raven found herself wishing for one of Beast Boy's poorly timed jokes. There had been so few incidents since her father's defeat that she wasn't sure any of them really knew how to react to her lapses in control anymore.

It should have been an easy fight, and aside from that one moment, it really was. Cinderblock had gone after the new jewelry store down 25th Street, but it was a narrower road than his usual stomping grounds. There had been a bit more smashing than usual on his part before the Titans had arrived on the scene, thus more debris to navigate. All of the Titans, save Raven, had ended up pinned in one spot below Cinderblock, trapped by rubble and miscommunication and paralyzed from the fear of leaving anyone behind. Raven found herself floating off to the left between Cinderblock and the store in her defensive position, but with a group of heroes just by his foot, Cinderblock's focus on the shining window displays had disappeared. There was only the group of Titans below him, and as he raised a foot to stomp on the band of heroes, Raven felt something snap within her.

The air crackled for only two seconds, but in a heartbeat Cinderblock found himself embedded in the concrete of 25th Street, large cracks all over his stone form. Raven remembered landing and seeing the looks on her friends' faces. There was no doubt that same wide-eyed surprise was splayed across her own face, and she felt so naked with her hood hanging down her back rather than on her head. Robin had been the first to bring himself back to the present, but when he reached a hand towards her, she had shaken her head and directed her eyes to the pavement. She did not, however, flee, as she would have in the past. Instead, Raven quickly tugged her hood back up to hide in the shadow. Her friends gave her a moment to breathe, all waiting for her to make the first move. And Raven was grateful for that. She closed her eyes and took one, two, three deep breaths, and finding that nothing was amiss in her mind, she raised her head and locked eyes with each of them: Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin. Then they set off pretending nothing had happened and those violent flashes of purple and red light weren't out of the ordinary for their petite sorceress.

Raven lifted her head and crossed her arms above her knees so she could draw her cloak tighter around her before lowering her head back to its resting position. The gentle beeps of Beast Boy's game had stopped and he was dozing off, but still nobody made a move to go to bed.

She really should meditate tonight, Raven thought, but she had no motivation for it. Her body was far too tired, and while meditation was still a necessity despite her father's defeat, it was no longer the life or death necessity it once was. It was just nice to have that near-absolute control over her emotions so that when she did feel inclined to share one, she could do so freely. There were still limits for now, though. It was a learning process like anything else. Raven registered the sound of a television blip as it powered off, and she shifted her gaze towards Starfire.

"Goodnight, dear friends," the redhead yawned as she picked her way around the snoozing Beast Boy. She grabbed her boots from the floor and tossed the half-melted ice bag in the sink before exiting. At the sharp sound of ice hitting the metal sink, Beast Boy opened one eye and straightened up, wiping a bit of drool from his face.

"What time is it?" he asked, stretching with a quiet yawn.

"Almost midnight," Robin answered automatically. The changeling rose from the ground and stretched again, twisting to and fro as he worked the kinks out of his back.

"Bedtime, then," Beast Boy said before following Starfire's path out of the living room.

"Night, B," Raven heard Cyborg say as the door swished open. The sound of a laptop clicking shut followed that of the closing door, and Raven sensed Cyborg approach the couch. He entered her line of sight and knelt to plug the laptop in by the Game Station.

"You okay, Rae?" he asked as he stood and turned to look at her. Raven briefly wished he had gone to bed like the others, because only Robin appreciated silence like she did, but she quickly dismissed the thought as she reminded herself he had every right to ask that question.

"It's nothing." He could ask, but that didn't mean she had to answer. Cyborg studied her for a second before shrugging.

He means well, Raven thought to herself. She gave a soft wave goodnight as he began to walk away, and Cyborg gave her a smile in return before leaving for bed.

Then it was just the two birds. Raven couldn't tell if Robin was watching her or not, and finally she decided to go to her room and read. Robin rose from the couch with her, and the two walked in silence to the elevator.

"You're sure it's nothing?" Robin asked quietly as he pushed their floor number. Raven mentally cursed; it was harder to lie to Robin.

"Isolated incident," she responded, reverting to shop talk. And it truly was an isolated incident, but her new method of training her emotions wasn't one she was willing to share, not even with Robin. And he was her best friend.

"Raven…" he said in that warning tone he sometimes used around her. It was a tone that spoke volumes: _I trust you, but I'm worried_; _Are you sure, because I'm not_; _I don't believe you, but I don't want to pry_; _I respect you and your need for silence, but please share with me_. _Talk to me_, _talk to me_, _talk to me_.

"Robin," she said in response, finally turning to catch his eye. Her hood was down and she knew Robin could see the quiet plea in her eyes to not push the subject any further right now. His jaw twitched, in acceptance or annoyance she couldn't be sure, but when the elevator swished open, his hand found its place at the small of her back as they exited. As soon as they were in the hallway, it fell away once more, but these subtle touches Robin had taken to were invaluable to Raven. A physical show of his support, something unnecessary, but not unwelcome. It was his way of reaffirming their mental bond, and Raven knew he drew as much comfort from them as she did.

"Goodnight," Raven said softly, turning to walk to her room without a second look back. Other nights they might have stayed up late talking in the living room, but this was not one of those nights. She felt Robin's eyes on her for a moment before he, too, turned to walk to his room. His gait was much slower than hers.

Raven felt her shoulders relax as her door closed behind her. Quickly changing out of her uniform, she retrieved a book from beneath her pillow and settled back against her headboard, blankets comfortably pooled around her waist.

This was her secret, these books in the quiet of the night. Emotional books: the secret stash of a bibliovore. They were no works of Shakespeare, not the caliber of Poe, and lacked the beauty of the classics, but they were brilliant in their own way, and just what she needed for this purpose.

In the quiet of the night, Raven let tears leak uninhibited from her eyes. Emotionally fueled, though not filled, tears. In her world of books, she found secret escape. For reasons not quite understood completely, Raven was free to feel along with the characters, to love as Mabel and Jack loved, to mourn as Hig mourned, to heal as Melinda healed, to feel rage and the swift cut of joy as Pudge did (1). Her 'Midnight Books,' she called them. They were her secret world. It was as if her color-cloaked counterparts were following along with her, as though they were just as enraptured with the tale of Richard Mayhew and Door as she was (2). Raven had even swiped Beast Boy's Harry Potter collection the other week. These were not the intelligent tomes one would expect Raven to read; they were not the dark poems she used to exclusively read. These were stories of stargirls and wallflowers, stories that unobtrusively plucked at her heartstrings (3). Her tears could fall without consequence and her room stayed mostly intact, and so she read on, allowing each of her emotions a raw moment to simply _be_, and in this way she trained herself to feel in control of feeling.

She had broken her midnight ritual earlier today after the first alarm. Her current book begged her return, and after lunch and assuming they would be home the rest of the day, she had returned to her room to continue reading. That had been her mistake. In the middle of Love's turn, the second alarm had blared, and the disruption had left her off balance. The purple and red power that had escaped her had, of course, been none other than Love and Anger. Love for her friends, anger for the fear that they would be hurt. Frankly, she should have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly she had regained control and reestablished balance after the incident.

A quiet knock at her door interrupted her thoughts and the witty banter of her current literary heroes, and she raised her head to look at the door, wondering if she had imagined it. When there was no further intrusion, she went back to her story, but a moment later there was another quiet knock, and Raven was too shocked to do anything but watch as the door slid open and Robin stepped into the room. He looked momentarily surprised to see that she was still awake, but quickly regained his composure, and he walked over to sit next to her on her bed.

"Are you crying?" he asked, raising a finger to wipe at her cheek. His skin was soft against hers, and she realized he wasn't wearing his gloves.

"What are you doing here?" she asked instead of answering his question. Robin wiped at her other cheek, his hands pausing as they framed her face, before letting them drop back to his lap.

"I was worried about you," he said simply, brow furrowed as he studied her face. Raven turned his words over in her mind before a small smile appeared on her face.

"The funny thing is," Raven said, "I'm fine." She gestured to her book, stifling a small laugh as she saw the look of recognition flash across Robin's face. It had been his Christmas present to her, something he had given thinking she'd never read it, but hoping she would anyways.

"I'm training my emotions," Raven continued. It was easier just to tell the truth at this point. Nothing else she could think of to explain this away would make much sense. "I'm feeling through other things first, for lack of a better explanation."

"But you _are _emotional around us now," Robin countered, his brow still quirked, though no longer with worry.

"You fight, yet you still train," Raven said, choosing her words carefully. "Yes, I feel around you all, but at times it doesn't feel like it's enough. So I do this." She held up the book slightly to emphasize her point. She wanted to feel more fully, to be able to better express her affection for her friends. But all of that sounded far too cheesy to voice aloud, and she knew the boy sitting by her would understand her unspoken message. Robin looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he smiled.

"I like that idea," he murmured. "Tell me when you finish this one." He pointed down at the blue cover with the black and white clouds (4). Standing, Robin leaned down and kissed Raven on the cheek before disappearing down the hall. She stared after him, a small smile dancing on her face. And then she returned to her book, whisked away on a literary adventure in Amsterdam and very much looking forward to seeing Robin again the next day.

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Sooo there it is! Update for 'LITS' coming soon, I swear! Please review!

-Ash =)

**Books referenced**:

(1) Mabel and Jack: _The Snow Child_, by Eowyn Ivey. (Fun fact: this is where the book line from my other story 'Anxiety' came from)

Hig: _The Dog Stars_, Peter Heller

Melinda: _Speak_, Laurie Halse Anderson

Pudge: _Looking for Alaska_, John Green

(2) Richard Mayhew and Door: _Neverwhere_, Neil Gaiman

(3) stargirls: _Stargirl_, Jerry Spinelli

wallflowers: _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_, Stephen Chbosky (of course)

(4) _The Fault in Our Stars_, John Green


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